My statement was short because I was told that this was mostly a time for discussion. So I can give you a little longer answer now.
Yes, we did receive the Public Health Agency of Canada's amendments 24 hours in advance. I have to say that the amendments are significant in their way. But they are cosmetic given that the experts who have come to testify, from a legal, scientific or medical perspective, all agree: the bill would be perfect for levels 3 and 4.
However, when you start to try to bring in level 2, things get a little more complicated. Even at level 3, to some extent. Our colleague Dr. Descoteaux mentioned HIV, which is not presently classed at level 3, because it is not aerosol-transmitted, but at level 2.8 or 2.9. Without going into technical details, according to the guidelines, HIV is not the same thing as tuberculosis or anthrax, for example. Do not forget that the HIV lobby is very strong and, if ever HIV were made a level 3 pathogen, people would be up in arms.
That said, we do not think that the bill should exclude level 2 entirely. Health Canada can attest to the fact that we do apply for licences. I gave you a document...
of about 22 pages that we have to fill out in order to be able to import strains from all around the world. So now there's a new amendment, and under the amendment we will also now need something in order to export. We will have to do due diligence on the people to whom we're going to send the strains. This is something new for us. It was not in the bill itself, but it was in the amendment.
So how do we do the due diligence on the people to whom we will send the strains? Is it enough that they be a university professor of biosafety? Or do we have to do a criminal check? I don't think it will be that way, but this is new for us.
To export things now, we also have to ask permission. They need their import permit for what we're sending.
Since we were coming here today, we received a number of documents from Health Canada, which we very much appreciated. I didn't know which document it was, so I read the first one, and I thought it was pretty bad. It was actually Bill C-11, and how it was explained to people.
I said there are new things here, and some are good and some are not that good. Those were the regulations. So why not put the regulations into the bill and then everybody will understand what the goal is?
Level 2 pathogens constitute 95% of the activity. Level 3 is pretty much 5% because there is only one laboratory in Canada that handles level 4, in Winnipeg. We all agree, when we are working with diseases that are potentially very dangerous, there has to be an extreme level of security.
Level 2 pathogens are the bread and butter of people doing research. We already have regulations. I mentioned that, in order to get money, we have to get approval from regulatory bodies, university bodies, institutional bodies and the bodies that are going to give us the money. Then, we have to apply for licences from Health Canada.
When we're asking for a strain for importation, we need Health Canada, but we also need CFIA, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Do the governments talk to each other, or will there be another set of regulations for CFIA,because it's not possible for us to import something only from the Public Health Agency? We also ask, will there be two types of regulations, one for Health Canada and one for CFIA?
In conclusion,
...level 2 pathogens should be controlled as they are now, and I feel that it works very well. It is a system that has been institutionalized for a long time. For pathogens in levels 3 and 4, the dangerous ones like anthrax, the bill should go into effect. We will have to see about HIV. For level 2, we still have concerns.